


A Day In The Sun

by Pippin4242



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, probably quite depressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 11:49:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18659848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pippin4242/pseuds/Pippin4242
Summary: It's a warm afternoon in the sand dunes of Cape Cod, and they're catching up, and it's been so long.





	A Day In The Sun

The air was warm, and smelt bad. But it smelled as though it was supposed to smell bad, which was its own kind of niceness, Eiji thought to himself – or perhaps, felt in the forefront of his mind, an arrived thought, without process.

It wasn't blood, or wet on concrete, or petrol fumes, or anything human. The air hung with thick nature scents. It smelled of evaporation, of salt, of seaweed and minute creatures dying, pushed by waves too far up the sand to return in time. Their tragedy was Eiji's authenticity of experience, and he found it soothed and cleared his mind.

The sky above was glowing through his closed eyelids. If he squinted just so, he could almost see his own capillaries, red strikes of lightning in a livid amber sky.

He flexed his toes, and felt his jeans crumple at the ankle. The salt water which had glued sand to his legs had already vanished in the sea-reflected warmth, and the sand fell away in hard little sheets and chunks. Somewhere beyond his eyelids, a seagull screamed rage at a calm, empty world.

If he shut out the birds and the water, he could hear for miles. He could hear the blood in his fingertips, knitted beneath his head as he lay upon the dunes. He could hear the grains of sand slip away from his body, as breathing shifted his weight in myriad tiny ways. And he could hear all the way into the boy sat beside him. Hear his silence, his fingers traced into the sand, his thudding heart.

“It's not real,” crackled Ash's voice, in irritation. “You don't have to keep doing this.”

“If you're not real,” Eiji heard himself reply, his voice far too deep, far too cigarette-strung, “then I'm not keeping you. Stop complaining.”

“You're smiling,” muttered Ash. “You like how much this annoys me.”

“I won't dream a fake you,” he agreed. “Why would I want to?”

“If you know this is a dream, why do you just lie around like this?” A hint of accusation laced Ash's tone. Like he had to poke until something changed.

Eiji said nothing.

“It's 'cos you're getting old, isn't it? I bet you can't even imagine anything better. You just want a whole load of nothing to do, and a teenager to creep on. Pervert.”

“If I'd kissed you when I had the chance, maybe you'd shut your damn mouth when I'm trying to enjoy dreaming you.”

“Fuck off. Anyway, you know I'm not real, so how could you enjoy it?”

“Because even in my memories you're you. Even in my subconscious. Whatever this is.”

“Your English isn't shitty when you're only imagining it.”

“It's better now anyway.”

They stayed for a while. Eiji felt the breeze move his hair back and forth. A harsh set of crunching crashes approached his right ear, and then walked away from his left. Footsteps, breaking the crusted sand. Small feet, walking in tandem. Children, not saying anything. They grew more and more quiet, until they were gone altogether.

“It wasn't this nice,” said Ash quietly.

“It was with you there,” Eiji assured him.

“Why don't you ever ask me anything?”

“I feel like I'd be putting words in your mouth. Because I really would be. I can't have you say anything I don't already think you feel.” Eiji twisted his body to face Ash, his eyes still closed as his face pressed against his outstretched arm.

“Dreams are where the subconscious mind makes sense of conundrums faced in the waking world.” Ash reflected for a moment. “It's fucking nice not to have to dumb down my language the whole time, you know.”

“You think you could tell me things I don't know I know about you?”

“You didn't notice I called all adult men perverts if they talked to me for more than a few minutes, but you dreamed it anyway.”

Fuck, that's right. He really did do that.

“You're breaking the spell, Ash,” Eiji chastened, opening his eyes and pushing himself upright.

There he was, staring out at the sea, his white t-shirt flapping in the breeze. The glow as his eyes reflected the light already reflected from the water didn't put Eiji in mind of a precious stone any more. It was never so rare as it looked, that shade of green. Instead it was ordinary sea-glass, tumbled until it was smooth and perfect and unique.

“I thought you liked that I was realistic in your dreams,” smirked Ash, an edge of bitterness in his tone. He didn't look at Eiji.

“I guess I liked that you were always realistic, even when you were real,” Eiji replied, ruefully. “But fuck, you're so young, aren't you? You're so fucking young.”

His skinny body in those half-outgrown jeans, the busted-in toes of his cheap sneakers, the hair which had looked so artfully messy but was just the look you get when you go too long between haircuts, or even brushes. This was a teenager, barely on the cusp of adulthood, barely a shade of the man he would have been.

It was like seeing the coal and the bucket the morning after a snowman melts.

Ash slowly turned and raised his head to look at him. It wasn't a child's gaze, but it was more animal than it was mature. Raw intellect and sharpened instincts substituting heavily for a lifetime of experience.

“Moustache makes you look like a cunt,” muttered Ash.

“Maybe,” smiled Eiji faintly, and Ash turned away in disgust. Disgust at what? Eiji's passivity? His changing fashion sense? Their age gap?

He'd keep moving away from him, even if he held still for the rest of his life.

“Ash?” breathed Eiji. It felt as though his entire soul were on his tongue, about to take flight. “Do you think we could have been happy?” The words escaped too early, and he regretted them instantly, dread sinking to his stomach in a heartbeat.

Ash glared inscrutably out to sea. He opened sakura-pink lips, showing a glimmer of unstained white teeth. And all that came out of his mouth was a series of piercing electronic beeps.

 _7:30_ , flashed the alarm, and Eiji was exactly as alone as always.


End file.
